oft, brought them towels and
soap, and Alehin went to the bath-house with his guests.

"It's a long time since I had a wash," he said, undressing. "I have got
a nice bath-house, as you see--my father built it--but I somehow never
have time to wash."

He sat down on the steps and soaped his long hair and his neck, and the
water round him turned brown.

"Yes, I must say," said Ivan Ivanovitch meaningly, looking at his head.

"It's a long time since I washed..." said Alehin with embarrassment,
giving himself a second soaping, and the water near him turned dark
blue, like ink.

Ivan Ivanovitch went outside, plunged into the water with a loud splash,
and swam in the rain, flinging his arms out wide. He stirred the water
into waves which set the white lilies bobbing up and down; he swam to
the very middle of the millpond and dived, and came up a minute later
in another place, and swam on, and kept on diving, trying to touch the
bottom.

"Oh, my goodness!" he repeated continually, enjoying himself thoroughly.
"Oh, my goodness!" He swam to the mill, talked to the peasants there,
then returned and lay on his back in the middle of the pond, turning his
face to the rain. Burkin and Alehin were dressed and ready to go, but he
still went on swimming and diving. "Oh, my goodness!..." he said. "Oh,
Lord, have mercy on me!..."

"That's enough!" Burkin shouted to him.

They went back to the house. And only when the lamp was lighted in the
big drawing-room upstairs, and Burkin and Ivan Ivanovitch, attired in
silk dressing-gowns and warm slippers, were sitting in arm-chairs;
and Alehin, washed and combed, in a new coat, was walking about the
drawing-room, evidently enjoying the feeling of warmth, cleanliness, dry
clothes, and light shoes; and when lovely Pelagea, stepping noiselessly
on the carpet and smiling softly, handed tea and jam on a tray--only
then Ivan Ivanovitch began on his story, and it seemed as though not
only Burkin and Alehin were listening, but also the ladies, young and
old, and the officers who looked down upon them sternly and calmly from
their gold frames.

"There are two of us brothers," he began--"I, Ivan Ivanovitch, and my
brother, Nikolay Ivanovitch, two years younger. I went in for a learned
profession and became a veterinary surgeon, while Nikolay sat in
a government office from the time he was nineteen. Our father,
Tchimsha-Himalaisky, was a kantonist, but he rose to be an officer and
left us a litt